Bankers have welcomed moves by the leading world economies to follow British and American pledges to part nationalise their banks to stave off worsening financial turmoil but have pleaded for concrete action.

Yesterday Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, announced that his government will buy stock in troubled financial institutions.

Leaders from the G7 leading world economise are this weekend holding crisis talks at the White House in Washington in an attempt to unfreeze markets and stave off a global recession.

The G7 meeting has released a five-point plan to deal with the worldwide financial crisis, including, a promise to "ensure that our banks…can raise capital from public as well as private sources, in sufficient amounts to re-establish confidence and permit them to continue lending to households and businesses."

The agreement comes after markets ended their worst week in history, with shares plunging by more than a fifth on all leading stock markets.

The bankers urged the meeting between President George Bush and the G7 ministers - from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada - to produce more than just “warm platitudes”.

Yesterday Mr Paulson said the group had finalised “an aggressive action plan to address the turmoil in the global financial markets”.

The programme to purchase stock in the financial institutions will be open to a broad array of institutions, Mr Paulson said.

He said the ministers were focused on the immediate need to stabilise the financial markets and said it had never been more important to find “collective solutions”.

“As we develop plans to purchase equity... we are working to develop a standardised programme that is open to a broad array of financial institutions,” he said.

“We are developing strategies to use the authority to purchase and insure mortgage assets, and to purchase equity in financial institutions, as deemed necessary to promote financial market stability.”

The US administration received the authority to make direct purchases of stock in banks in the 700 billion dollar (£410bn) rescue package which the Congress passed last week.

Explore Economics

• Pre-Budget Report 2008

• Budget 2009

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts